The Objective
Measuring Kraft’s brand perception
A globally trusted producer of delicious foods, the Kraft Heinz Company is the third-largest food and beverage company in North America, with eight $1 billion brands. The Chicago-based company houses over 200 household brands and operates across 40 global markets. Its brand team has worked with Later Influence since 2018.
Kraft Heinz needed to measure the impact its influencer campaigns were having on top-funnel metrics: recall, brand favorability, and intent to purchase.
Specifically, they wanted to measure and understand how exposure to the #LoveforKraft Instagram campaign impacted perceptions of the Kraft brand and the impact of the Instagram posts on brand awareness, purchase intent and favorability.
The Solution
Influencers highlighting core values
To increase brand awareness, favorability, and intent, the Kraft Brand Team wanted to leverage influencers’ authentic love, experiences, and passion for the brand. To highlight its core brand attributes influencers communicated how Kraft products take pressure off parents, provide moments of relief, and make parenting more joyful. Kraft executed a tiered influencer campaign strategy to identify the top influencers for the Kraft Brand family.
Working with micro and macro influencers
Kraft first recruited micro- and macro- influencers who are parents to showcase Kraft products and recipes on Instagram. Next, Kraft worked with Later to identify the top performers across these campaigns based on content quality and adherence to brand standards. Kraft then invited them to apply to the #LoveforKraft ambassador program for the Kraft Brand family.
Accepted micro- and macro-influencer ambassadors were then instructed to purchase their favorite Kraft products (e.g. Kraft Mac and Cheese, Kraft Natural Cheese, Kraft Singles) to feature in their posts. Influencers created a static Instagram post twice per month with the hashtags #LoveforKraft, #FamilyGreatly, #Ad, the name of the product featured, and the @kraft_brand tag. Influencers were incentivized with a $75 Visa gift card.
Measurement methodology
To measure how the #LoveForKraft campaign helped to increase top-of-mind awareness, purchase intent, and favorability, Kraft and Later conducted a brand lift study with Group RFZ that compared those exposed to influencers’ #LoveForKraft content on Instagram with an unexposed control group.
As traditional brand lift studies don’t take into account the power of the influencers themselves, the study was designed specifically to measure the impact of influencer marketing by ensuring that the exposed group has some level of awareness of the specific influencer(s).
The study used a standard control/exposed methodology. The exposed group was recruited from an audience of individuals who had already engaged with one of the influencers’ profiles and were re-exposed to a #LoveForKraft post. The exposed group was comprised of 173 individuals and the control group was comprised of 200 individuals.
Exposed individuals were shown a re-created Instagram feed that included one of five influencer posts.
A notable brand lift
The results of the #LoveForKraft Group RFZ brand lift study revealed that exposure to the #LoveforKraft influencer campaign had a positive impact on Kraft’s KPIs, particularly among specific subgroups (i.e., Kraft users vs. non-Kraft users; households with children vs. without children).
Compared to the control group, the exposed group:
- Was more favorable to Kraft.
- Had higher unaided and top-of-mind awareness of Kraft.
- Had higher brand attribute ratings among those without children and those who do not regularly purchase Kraft products.
- Influencer posts also had a strong impact on those without children and those who do not regularly purchase Kraft products.
Brand attribute ratings of Kraft saw a high lift among those two subgroups and had an improved lift on KPIs.
The Results
Brand awareness and brand lift
+40pt
Lift in Brand Favorability
+15pt
Lift in Purchase Intent
2.3M
Impressions
186.8K
Engagements
As a result of activating macro and micro-influencers to create 46 #LoveForKraft posts on Instagram to increase awareness, favorability, and intent, the Kraft brand lift study indicated:
- +40 pt lift in brand favorability among non-Kraft users
- +15 pt lift in purchase intent of on-Kraft users
These 46 posts also led to:
- 2.3 M estimated impressions on influencer posts;
- 186.8K estimated engagements on influencer posts; and
- $0.09 average influencer cost per engagement.